Texts & Tools

Texts & Tools

You will find here a collection of contributions of different authors sharing their ideas, views or lessons learnt during their professional development. Please feel encouraged to comment on the contributions and share your experiences on the various topics. If you would like to add your own contribution, please get in contact with us.

Patricia Rosado Pinto of NOVA Lisbon tells about the founding and the beginnings of their Doctoral School. She gives insights into the main ideas of the establishment and the main goals to train PhD students in various fields.

Gerald Lind describes the struggles at the University of Graz during the process of establishing the support unit to improve doctoral education "DocServices". Especially the met dissapproval by supervisors due to various reasons was striking. The DocServices team found a successful way of creating a basis of acknowledgement for a new supervisory culture within their institution.

If you are working in doctoral education, as administrator, supervisors, higher education professional or in whatever position which places you in close contact with postgraduate education, chances are you are taking “doctorate” or “PhD” as something for granted and commonly understood. This will most likely be true if you are (relatively) new in this job. However, believe it or not, doctorate was not always what it is today. The form it has today, although it can vary a lot from country to country, was very different just twenty years ago. Transferable skills, multiple supervision, quality assurance, career development, different funding possibilities, internationalization, different models of doctorate – these are all relatively new characteristics of the doctorate. Here we will give a brief history of the doctorate, from its beginning in mediaeval ages to the various forms it has today.

Being aware of the key milestones of higher education policy is essential to do a good job as a professional in doctoral education. The better you know about and understand the policy environments you work in, the more suitable and sustainable services you are able to develop

We believe in knowledge-sharing as a competitive advantage and try to achieve this with interactive webinars organised by professionals, for professionals. Our second webinar aimed at professionals who want to set up, improve or reflect on their training offers in transferable skills.

Watch the webinar with Verity Eston and Christian Dumpidak an Transferable Skills Training recorded in November 2018!

About the Association

The PRIDE-network Association aims at representing the community of Professionals in Doctoral Education within Europe and beyond.